Seeing Every Side In Every Situation

INFJ and INTJ personality types are known for being able to see multiple sides to a given situation. Both these types lead with a mental process called Introverted Intuition (Ni). Personality Hacker nickames this process “Perspectives.” It functions as an advanced pattern recognition process that analyzes what’s going on inside the human mind. But it’s not just focused on an individual’s take on how the world works. To quote Personality Hacker’s Antonia Dodge, “users of Introverted Intuition aren’t married to their own perspectives. They can take a meta-perspective and understand the ways in which we’re the same and different on a cerebral level.”

So what does this look like in real life? Let’s take politics as an example.

Politics (yup, we’re going there)

Most of the people I’m around in real life are strong conservatives, but I’m also in contact with quite a few liberals online. I get to see arguments, news articles, and personal perspectives from both sides of the ideological divide.

I see people who were vocalizing hate for Obama up in arms about how the liberals are treating Trump. I see people who told conservatives to get over it and be happy with Obama as their duly elected president protesting Trump in droves. I’ve seen conservative news articles vilifying Obama for his expensive vacations replaced by liberal news articles condemning Trump for the exact same thing. It just goes on and on and and both sides seem completely blind to the fact that they’re reacting in such similar ways.

My Introverted Intuition lets me notice patterns like this. More than that, I can understand people on both sides without really feeling like I identify 100% with either (except on a very few individual issues). And that makes it hard to discuss politics with most of the people who want to talk about politics. If you’re trying to find some middle ground and encourage others to step outside their own perspectives, you might find both sides fighting you as strongly as they’d been fighting each other.

The Few, The Frustrated, The Misunderstood

There aren’t all that many people operating with Ni as their dominant mental process. According to the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, combined they only make up 3 to 7 % of the total population. Our minds don’t work the same way as most other people. That’s one reason we often feel misunderstood. On top of that, our ability to climb inside other peoples’ perspectives gives us insight into others’ minds that not many people can match in return or even fully understand (though some ENFJs and ENTJs who’ve developed their auxiliary Ni, and maybe some ISTPs and ISFPs who use tertiary Ni, might come close).

Our rather unique way of looking at the world can make us feel lonely and frustrated. We might feel like we don’t fit in with certain groups because we can also understand the perspective of the people they disagree with. We might have people reject us because we can only agree with them 75% instead of 100%. We might hide our true opinions or the questions we think about from the people we care for so they won’t feel like we’re attacking them.

Most Ni dominant types are curious about how the world works. They want to ask questions to see where other people stand and understand different viewpoints. We like to throw out “what if …?” questions and see what happens. We’ll also play “devil’s advocate” in arguments to refine our thoughts on a given topic and help the person we’re talking with refine their’s. Other people can misinterpret these things as threatening to their own convictions or as an attempt to sabotage the status quo.

Another Perspective: Ni As A Superpower

I actually love this side of my INFJ personality. At least, I do now. When I was younger, I felt odd because I didn’t feel as firmly convicted about most issues as the people around me seemed. I felt that sharing my questions and voicing alternate opinions wasn’t encouraged. But my second quarter of college, I met a professor who actually encouraged me to write my questionings and unpopular viewpoints into my essays even when I completely disagreed with him. And he, and others, kept doing that for the next four years.

Some time after that is when I started getting interested in studying Myers-Briggs types, so I discovered this ability to adopt a meta-perspective is a natural part of my personality. Studying personality types also helped me understand why so many people see intuitive idea generation as threatening. Once I understood that, I could start phrasing my shared thoughts in a way that appealed to other personality types more.

One of the great strengths of the Ni types is that we bring alternative perspectives to the table and we can learn to present these perspectives in a way that appeals to the different personalities. We have a gift that can help build bridges between people on intellectual and emotional levels. And that’s a pretty cool superpower.

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2 thoughts on “Seeing Every Side In Every Situation”

Yes, yes, and YES. Would love to hear how you learned to phrase your thoughts and questions in a way that is more palatable for other personality types. I have worked endlessly at that myself, and still feel like I could do more. I always worry about accidentally making people feel like I am overwhelping them with perspectives and questions. There is so much to always process! 🙂

I always feel I could do more, too. Just studying different personality types is mainly what I’ve done, trying to learn how the different types think and what tends to trigger a stress reaction in each. I’m constantly trying to improve. There are still (way too many) times I’ll stay something and people will react differently than I intended